Taking a little break from manga reviews today with something a little different. This is not about which medium is better and it’s certainly not all deciding factors. This is an opinion based write up and comments and thoughts are welcome in the section below.
If you circle the anime and manga related sites, you’ve no doubt come across the manga vs. anime statements, ranging from personal taste to which medium flourishes best in today’s market. While anime has been facing slow decline in recent years, manga continues to keep a strong hold in the market: numerous publishing companies, a sea of endless titles and booming sales work to represent this success.
When the question of why there’s such a discrepancy between the two arises, some of the most defining factors seems evident and I’m calling it the three Ps: production, price and preview.
Production
Primarily, when I think of production, I think of what it takes to make the product. Comparing the products of what companies and licensors offer to those offered for free by online fan-subbers and scanlators, there’s an aspect aside from price that I believe is a defining factor. Reproduction.
Fan-subbed anime and DVD rips are not hard to come by in this day and age. It’s an easy task to find what one’s looking for, especially when it’s for the attractive price of free. Out there is high-resolution captures, high quality subbing and a swirling fan community that shares and exchanges.
In terms of production, most video files can easily be burned onto DVDs, played on television screens via computer hook-ups and streamed endlessly on free servers. Many anime fans will tell you that bonus features and a dub don’t mean that much to them, so an anime DVD that collects only 3-5 episodes of a series, with a dash of extra features, means nothing when a fan can easily create their own DVD that has all, and only, the stuff they want, and often at the same production quality.
On the other side of the spectrum comes manga. It’s just as easy to find free manga online: thousands of titles are available, scanned from tankubon and anthologies in Japan daily and translated for readers all over the world. They generally don’t take up as much space as anime downloads and fans can sometimes burn hundreds of short series onto a single CD.
What manga publishers offer that scanlators cannot is binding. If a manga reader cared enough, they’d be more than capable of printing off 200+ sheets of paper and binding them together but to what added benefit? The cost of paper and ink would probably easily amount past a $10 book purchase, not to mention the time and effort of the printing. The thought alone seems rather ridiculous.
There also comes the convenience of mobility. If someone wanted to read manga while on a bus, take it to a friend’s house, take it to school, etc., it’s easy when in a small book form, as opposed to requiring a computer to view the files. While anime can be just as portable, it can also be done using iPods and other similar media players, which can be loaded with free download media (as opposed to that which is legitimately available but for a price). One could argue the same for manga, but trying to read pages and pages of manga on a small screen-scale is just not practical and not nearly as commonly practiced.
Manga is simply a medium that isn’t as easily reproduced by fans as anime releases.
Production also refers to the cost of companies bringing their releases to the public. Manga is, on average, cheaper to license, prepare and print than an anime is to license, dub and prepare. Because of this, the cost is reflected by the cost of the item, which leads to the next P: price.
Price
While manga costs range from as low as $8.99 to a high of about $19.99, anime DVDs rarely fall below the $20 line and new ones usually begin at about $59.99. When three or more volumes of manga can be purchased for the price of one DVD, it’s not hard to see the choice tends to fall to the books. When a great deal of the market is targeted towards teens, most of which don’t have a great deal of income to spend on their hobbies, simply put, cheapest wins.
Also because of price, consumers are more willing to take a chance on a series they don’t know much about it when the price wouldn’t cripple them to do so. Feeling you have the financial edge to take a chance with your money is one thing, but having the ability to judge if something is worth your cash is usually best determined by the third P: preview.
Preview
A strong deciding factor for any shopper is the ability to preview a product before they purchase. This can come in a variety of forms: free previews offered by companies, reviews by fellow consumers or browsing store shelves in search of something eye-catching. A defining difference between manga and anime for shoppers is preview availability.
When a shopper walks into their local bookstore, faced with a wall of manga titles, it can seem a daunting thing. However, with the exception of those shrink-wrapped for mature content, generally readers are free to flip and browse through any book they wish. How’s the story? The artwork? They have all the time and ability in the world to determine if they think it’s worth a purchase.
Of course, there’s the negative side of this: freeloaders who seat themselves in aisle ways and read entire books in place of purchasing them. But for what lack of sales this causes, I believe it’s safe to say the number would not be as large compared to no manga being so thoroughly available for preview before purchase.
On the flipside, anime releasing companies use trailers and free episode viewings, both online and on free discs, to allow their buyers preview. Unfortunately what can be gleaned from a single episode, will often seem to viewers as not enough to make a $60 decision, especially when that cost will only cover a mere percentage of a series’ full length.
Fortunately what anime does have that manga doesn’t is TV showings. Numerous animes are screened daily on a regular basis, allowing viewers to watch an entire series, or a few episodes if they prefer, before they decide if they wish to buy it. It’s a powerful part of getting a series out to its market and the general populace, who may not give a title a second glance on store shelves. Of course on the downside, there’s always the ability to record the shows in place of buying them, but it’s a small percentage and not as commonly practiced today in light of the Internet.
Like manga, stores that stock a lot of anime can be overwhelming to shoppers, shelves lined with numerous titles and genres; each one seemingly shinier than the last. But what ability to potential buyers have past the shiny layout? There’s the cover art and the synopsis on the back, some short words of praise from reviews slapped on the cover? Some may come with knowledge they already have on the subject but to most, it’s just another title. Those interested can head home, research, maybe find a free episode preview offered by the company. Unfortunately by then it’s already too late, they’ve left the scene of the purchase. It’s less likely they’ll return and, who knows, in their research, the full series for free could easily present itself.
So in the end, it seems manga has some reasons for its success. Does this mean it’s an definite thing for the future? Unfortunately not. Everything has its ups and downs. Manga may yet face a steep downfall and anime may yet climb back up onto more consumers shopping lists with producers finding new ways to lower prices. To each their own, but with so many vast differences between production, price and preview availability, personal preference is certainly not the entire deciding factor.
Written April 29, 2008 by Lissa Pattillo
Follow
For me i've pretty much always prefered the manga versions of stuff. I've found that generally the manga has a better feel and flow than the anime does. Also the anime tends to skip things they consider minor, which are usually the bits i've loved lol
Manga is already in it's downfall though, you just need to look at the slow down in licensing to get an idea. Also a lot of previously licensed material has been dropped or put on hold. A lot of people say it's the recenssion, but this has been happening for a year now.
The problem i see is to many publishers, so the market is becoming saturised. in a month we can see upwards of 20 titles released, how many people would buy them all?
I usually only buy 3-5 new releases and the rest are all titles i've got already. A new title has to be something spectacular for me to buy it. Though impuls buying can never be ruled out hehe
(@Tiamat) I'm the same way, I've always preferred manga over anime. However, for the few times I have been interested in anime, price was always a big deciding factor for me. I'd much rather buy myself a handful of manga over one DVD.
The drop in the manga industry certainly can't be denied. It may still be, seemingly, fairing better than the anime industry, but it's certainly not as strong as it used to be. I think there's less 'big name' titles to hype up and now it's all just leveling itself out.
Manga pricing also makes for much fun when it comes to impulse buys (even if my wallet hates me for it later ;p )
[…] Pattillo has an interesting comparison of manga and anime at […]
hehe i know that feeling well. My local store is in the middle of a buy 2 get one free sale, it's taking a lot of will power not to go nuts buying all the stuff i've wanted for a while.
Anime wise i used to be the same, the price was usually to much for me to even consider buying. Then of course we have Bandai increasing the prices even more lol
I found a place that i buy from now, i got a tone of series for $19.99 each. These were complete sesasons aswell. 12 Kingdoms, Chobits, Noir, MadLax, Kyo Kara, and Fruits Basket.
Then of course we have the Anime Legends collections, shame they take so damned log to come out though.
Manga wise though, TBH i think the industry is still in shock from the collapse of Geneon. So rather than being their usual risk taking selves, they're going extremely carefuly, not wanting to risk it.
Viz, ADV, TP all have large manga on hold, some of which i guess could be big earners if released right.
[…] has a brief article up about the new Mandarake store in Akiba. – Over Kuriosity, we have a nice editorial on why the manga industry hasn’t been hit as hard by piracy as the anime industry. – Hey, did […]
It was interesting. You seem very knowledgeable in your field.